Listening to music can be an adventure, an adventure of perception!

What does this mean? Well, there are many different ways and combinations of perceiving something - in general and especially in art. When we read a book we read words and sentences with which we associate meaning. We piece these associations and meanings together in our mind creating a mental image of the story that the author is telling. When we look at a painting we can often immediately recognize what is shown on the canvas (and sometimes we have to do a little more thinking!). When we watch a movie we combine the perceptive skills of seeing, hearing and recognizing while we follow the development of the story line.

And what about music? Let's do the following mental excercise: imagine sitting in a movie theater watching a film that shows moving pictures of things that you can't recognize clearly but that evoke some kind of response in you. Just shapes, movements, colors and sounds! These shapes keep zooming in and out, they fill the screen and leave it again, move faster and slower again, change color and do all kinds of unexpected, weird things.

Now: you'd definitely be entertained, if not fascinated by what's going on on that screen, because humans, like animals, are attracted to motion; but, more importantly, because you would start to have associations inspired by what you see (and hear). You might say - oh, this looks like a bird, this resembles a face, this reminds me of...

And music? Well, that's exactly what's happening in music: shapes, movement, colors (often very pleasant) all in sound! What are melodies but shapes, what is rhythm but movement, and what is harmony and the choice of very specific instruments but color, sound-color!

This is a very simple thought, but have you ever actually thought about it this way, and more importantly: have you ever tried to listen to music in this way? Do you consciously listen for moving, dancing figures, rising and falling shapes, or repeating or contrasting patterns in music? The marvelous thing about learning how to focus your hearing to listen for the moving shapes and colors in music is that virtually no music, old, new, classical, pop or modern, Western or non-Western will remain alien and abstract to you - because you master the basic skill of knowing what to look for in music, any music, and to give it meaning, the meaning that you give it as you see it in the interplay of the shapes, movements and colors that you perceive.

But there's even more connected to all of this. Music can do something which perhaps none of the other arts - with the exception of dance - can do. Like no other art music can express emotions. Sometimes music is simply the result of experiencing pure and raw emotion. The shapes, movements and colors in the music are those of the musician's emotions which might resemble the shapes, movements and colors of our own emotions. We can understand them and relate to them without there being any need for words.

And now, keeping all of this in mind, let's listen to a piece by composer Larry Bell scored for Saxophone, Cello and Piano entitled "Mahler in Blue Light".

After that we'll listen to a movement from a composition by John Harbison for Alto Saxand piano called 'San Antonio'.

Before listening to each piece, however, look into our little paragraphs for each of the movements. They contain some suggestions about what to look out for when listening to the music.

Larry Bell: Mahler in Blue Light

I. Fantasy and Fugue

Listen to the striking contrast between the high-pitched scream of the saxophone that opens this movement and the slower, pensive character of the music that immediately follows it. Try to remember this contrast - it will occur again in other movements.

Pay particular attention to the placement and movement of high/low notes.

Observe the contrast between fast and regular note patterns and slow, more lyrical ones and watch the kind of energy that is built up and released.

[Can you locate the first three entries of the fugue-theme?]

II. Intermezzo

Can you recognize a Viennese-Waltz-feel in the piano?

Listen to the changing sound-colors in this movement, try to find words or analogies for the color of the cello and the sax, playing in unison.

Towards the end of the movement there is a very exposed chord progression in the piano alone. Make sure you catch it.

III. Variations on a Theme by Mahler

As the title states this movement contains a series of variations on a musical theme by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). The theme is taken from the last movement of his composition "Das Lied von der Erde" (The Song of the Earth). Try to familiarize yourself with the original

A good recording is by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim conducting, ERATO 2292-45 624-2; index 6 cue 11:13 and 12:03.

Try to remember the melody of those opening chords and follow what happens in the course of the development of the music.

There's obviously a dialogue going on between the Sax./Cello and the piano. Are they perhaps all trying to say the same thing but seem to take great pains in doing so? Is that pain ever resolved? Do they finally all come together?

IV. Rondo Finale

Listen to the restless energy produced by repeated note patterns. Could this music remind you of the music of Michael Nyman?

Can you see that all the musical figures of the first three movements come together in this last movement?

When the piece is over think about whether you like how Larry Bell used the Mahler-theme in his piece to give it his own, very personal expression.